I would speak respectfully of that priesthood. Last Sunday we inhaled the perfume of its censers, we listened to the harmony of its canticles. The rod of Aaron had not blossomed in his hands in vain, and in the ancient tabernacle we almost adored the body of Christ Jesus prefigured in the manner, the word of Christ Jesus prepared in the decalogue. But however respectable in origin and essence the Levitical priesthood, it no longer merits respect, corrupted as it now is; or, at least, corrupted as are most of its members. This corruption bears a special name, pharisaism.

Is pharisaism hypocrisy? No. Whatever the dictionary may say, in the biblical sense pharisaism is not hypocrisy, unless in that subtle form, at once most innocent and most fatal, that unconscious hypocrisy which believes itself sincere. Jesus often said, "Pharisees, hypocrites," pharisaei, hypocriae; but he explained this expression by another, "Blind guides," pharisaee caece. And the great apostle Paul, himself a pharisee, reared, as he says, at the feet of the pharisee Gamaliel, bears witness in a striking manner to their sincere zeal for God, habent zelum Dei, but not according to knowledge, sed non secundum scientiam.

Pharisaism, thoughtfully considered, is religious blindness, the blindness of priestly depositaries of the letter, who think they guard it best by explaining it least; blindness bearing on all points of the sacred deposit—blindness in dogma, predominance of formula over truth; blindness in morals, predominance of external works over interior justice; blindness in worship, predominance of external rites over religious feeling. Blindness in dogma. They taught the truth. "The scribes and pharisees sit on the chair of Moses," said Christ; "all, therefore, whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not; for they say, and do not."

There is no revealed idea enlightening and vivifying the world that has not words to contain it: lucerna verbum tuum, domine. But when speech compresses itself, when it encloses the idea as in a jealously narrow prison, obscuring and choking it, that is pharisaism. That is what the apostle Paul called guarding the word, but keeping it captive in iniquity. That is what forced from the meek lips of our Saviour Jesus the terrible anathema Vae vobis! "Wo to you who have taken the key of knowledge, and will not enter, and all those who would try to enter, you prevent."

In morals, it is exterior works, it is a multiplicity of human practices, resting like a despicably tyrannical load upon the conscience, making it forget, in unhealthy dreams, that it is an honest man's conscience, a Christian conscience. The pharisees said to Jesus Christ, "Why do thy disciples transgress the traditions of the ancients? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread." And our Saviour replied, "Why do you trample under foot the commandments of God, to keep the commandments of men?" Rites are essential to worship, as formula is essential to dogma—wo to him who tears the formula of biblical revelation, or the formula of the definitions of the church; and, since works are essential to morality, wo to him who sleeps in a dead and sterile faith, without works.

Worship! but worship is the expansion of the religious soul; it is the heart's emotion rising odorous and harmonious to God. It is action working from within outward; it is, also, the not less legitimate reaction from without inward. Rites elevate religious feeling, and arouse inspiration in heart and conscience.

But when there is no religious feeling, when heart and conscience bend beneath the weight of exterior practices; "Yea, verily," said Jesus Christ again, (for the gospels are full of these things; the gospels are the eternal reprobation of pharisaism,) yea, verily, the prophet Isaias spoke truly when he said, "This people honoreth me with their lips, and with their hands, but their heart is far from me."

This is the yoke of which St. Peter said, "You would impose it on the head of nations; neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear it." This is the smothered and exhausted breath with which they thought to renew the world. This is not the Judaism of Moses, but the decrepit Judaism of the scribes and pharisees. When the entire world, by the eloquent lips of Greece and Rome, asked of the East salvation; when, by the sudden stir of barbarians quivering in the depths of Germany and Scythia, the world demanded light and civilization, this was offered to them! Judaism became the more inadmissible as the world had more need of it. Pharisaism, in its blind fanaticism, stood before the gates of the kingdom of heaven to prevent generations from entering.

Away! men of the letter; away! enemies of humanity. Adversantur omnibus hominibus, says St. Paul. And thou, Jesus, arise, my Saviour and God!—thou who wert moved by wrath twice only in thy life! Jesus felt no anger against poor sinners. He sat at their table; and when the woman taken in adultery fell at his feet, burning with shame and weeping with remorse, he raised her up, thinking only of absolving her: "Go in peace, and sin no more." He felt no anger against heretics and schismatics. He sat by Jacob's well, beside the woman of Samaria, announcing to her, with the salvation which comes from the Jews, quia salus ex Judaeis est, worship in spirit and in truth. But Jesus was moved with wrath on two occasions: once, scourge in hand, against those who sold the things of God in the temple, and again, with malediction on his lips, against those who perverted the things of God in the law.